Using VMM 2012 to create Servies Templates with Windows 2012 in private cloud

03/29/2013

In this article I will address the service templates feature in System Center Virtual Machine Manager, and 2012 before showing how it works it is important to contrast and relate with Virtual Machine templates, available since the first version of VMM.

Understanding Service Templates

The VMM templates feature since the first versions allows you to create a virtual machine as a template to use when creating other VMs. For it is created a VM, run SysPrep and copied the VHD for the Library.

The Service Template uses the VM templates, but is a more sophisticated feature where we can add virtualized applications, SQL Database Server, storage and network definition automatically.

A simple example of implementation of this feature is to create virtual machines with preinstalled applications, for example, anti-virus servers. To this it is possible to virtualize the application that will be installed on VMs with the App-V Server and include the Service Pack.

Note: in the next article I will discuss the Server App-V.

A more complex example is the implementation of a three-tier service where we have an IIS server by accessing data from SQL Server. We can create a two VM templates, a virtualized SQL Server and another virtual machine with IIS configured, in addition to the virtualized application components of the business layer.

In both cases, to make the creation of VMs just click on Service Template and generate the Instance where all VMs are automatically created, configured and available.

Creating Service Templates

To create the templates we use the menu itself into Fabric of VMM 2012. The request to create a new template you can choose some standard models, such as layered model with multiple servers, a single server or blank.

An example of creating service models can be seen below, where I used the Two-Tier option where are defined two VMs and a logical network:

In this example we have two VMs that are configured with IIS and the other with SQL Server with a network adapter in each, connected to local network created previously on Fabric toVirtual Networks, thus providing the IP, MAC Address and even if NLB is necessary for the service.

For each VM do the configuration of their duties separately, after setting the VM template will be used in each of the layers (tiers).

The first set will set the VM hardware data, remembering that the default is already created in the template definition of the VM:

Then we configure the roles (roles) of Windows that are enabled in the VM, which is an automation than we would have to do in Server Manager after installing a VM:

As well as the roles, identify the features (features) that this VM will have:

Still in the VM operating system settings can indicate activation data, name, user and password, etc. As in the example below the name of the computer is with asterisk "*" for the name of the VM is indicated at the time that instanciamos the service, since every creation of the VMs need to have a specific name:

In the sequel we can indicate service and applications that will be installed on the VM based on profiles that we will address in the topic forward. This item is interesting for already install the packet from the client application when this is already available, such as for example, an e-commerce system or other:

The last step is to set the dimension, or "price" of each VM, which is important when you create users who will be using the services from the System Center app controller, once we set the "credit" of each one of the users.

Instantiating a service

To create the set of VMs for the service, just click on it and use the option "Publish" setting in which the cloud will be created all the VMs:

Soon after will open the configuration screen of the specific data instances (where were asterisks "*"), as the example below taken from the System Center App Controller: